Interpol on the rise

Interpol. Picture / Supplied

Half of New York's Interpol are having drink problems when we meet. Singer and guitarist Paul Banks is hiding an Empire State Building-size hangover behind huge sunglasses, thanks to a hard night out in Camden watching the band Death from Above.

And bass player Carlos D has ordered a white russian from the hotel bar, the non-arrival of which caused consternation. Even when the drink arrives, it isn't all the band's resident neo-expressionist had in mind. "I can't decide if they gave me whipped cream or rotten milk in my white russian," D says, poking it with a straw from a safe distance.

Putting aside errant cocktails _ as D does, with a look of disgust as severe as his fringe _ Interpol couldn't be more composed today. It's not just because they arrive for the interview typically suited and booted, like they fell out of bed looking like they fell off a catwalk.

Here to plug their second album, Antics, Interpol have reason to be assured. The past couple of years have seen rising sales of their smartly sculpted debut album of 2002, Turn on the Bright Lights, R.E.M. covering one of their songs (the swooningly sad, stately NYC) at Madison Square Garden, and The Cure's Robert Smith inviting them to play on the Curiosa festival tour in America.

Antics substantiates that rise.

Doing the interviews in nicely efficient duos (Banks and drummer Sam Fogarino first, before D and guitarist Daniel Kessler, emerge from their hotel room, sparking off each other like a comedy double act), they agree that it came together smoothly.

"I don't think there was any concern about how we were gonna top ourselves," says Banks, who sings with a doomy quaver but isn't talking about suicide. "In terms of how we perceived outside pressure, we just tended to shut it out. Any pressure was brought on by ourselves _ not to outshine ourselves _ but to do something that shows the growth we felt writing the record.

In the flesh you're struck by the contrasts within the band: from Kessler's matinee-idol cool to D's cheek and Weimar chic, and from Fogarino's sturdy, besuited affability to Banks's unmistakable intensity. It's an alchemical kind of chemistry that creates their tense sound.

"Very much so," says Fogarino. "We have enough input from the four of us. That's how we write _ it's four perspectives of people that care. It's not objectivity, but I think if the four of us like a song it's a good gauge."

Kessler and D formed Interpol at New York University in 1998, when, famously, the guitarist couldn't help but admire the bass player's boots. Both band and boots drew wider attention in 2001, as the Strokes prompted the music press to hail New York as a resurgent epicentre of rock "cool".

Interpol sound nothing like Julian Casablancas and Co, or the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. But they were often mentioned in the same breath, like smarter, serious older brothers to the scene-leaders in the Big Apple's fresh slew of new- and no-wavers.

While The Strokes' second album, Room on Fire, didn't perform the unit-shifting business hoped for, Antics puts Interpol in a good position to become the city's all-new most famous offspring.

In terms of locating the band, critics have tended to fix them in a time period: specifically, as a throwback to the kind of nervy early-1980s post-punk bands that seemed to emerge as a reaction to the anxieties of the times (Thatcher, Reagan and so on) and against more throwaway-rock types.

"It's possibly down to our ability to tap a nerve," Fogarino says. "Our interest in creating a sense of atmosphere maybe appeals to people who need that at a given point in time.

"Personally, I remember being frustrated with superficial rock'n'roll party music, which is popular in New York. I'm not knocking it, but I needed more and that's why I ended up in Interpol, who I felt could take that 1-2-3-4 velocity and go deeper with it."

As to whether Interpol capture some of the tenor of our troubled times, the band are equivocal. "I don't know, because a lot of Bright Lights was written in the peachy days of Clinton," Banks says. "We're not writing in response to the fact that everything's going to hell in a handbasket. Maybe it's a funny coincidence. Maybe artists have an odd prescience."

"In the 1980s," says Fogarino, "you had it not only with brooding English bands but with Cali punk rock, which was an answer to the Reagan years. It goes hand in hand. What's going on socially feeds what's happening artistically."

"We're not a political band, though," Banks qualifies. "We have opinions on the political climate but Interpol is not a vehicle for that. For me, it's more about escape from that. Escape from the inescapable."

What has proved inescapable for Interpol is a battery of concomitant comparisons with post-punk figureheads Joy Division, resting on the sonorous Ian Curtis-ish tones of Banks' voice. The multi-shaded Antics should put paid to this as surely as it lifts them out of New York.

"Being compared to anything relentlessly is bothersome when you're trying to carve out an identity," says Fogarino. "My standpoint is that you being _ or, rather, one being _ short-sighted is not my fault. I could supply a pair of Q-Tips, some hydrogen peroxide and we could work on it, but beyond that ... well. The main source of influence is within, because we all bring so much to the table. What's going on in your life, with the band and everything, is where it comes from. Not Joy Division." A big sigh: "And if they only got it right, they would realise that it's Queen, really. We're ripping off Queen. I don't know why more people can't hear it."

"It's a lot more fun to talk about the fact that it happened than to go through the fact that it happened," says D, recoiling at the recollection of all those Joy Division jibes. "We're in an OK position now when people ask," Fogarino adds, "'Did it bother you?' It is relieving to have that distance and to be able to look back and go, yeah, that was chapter one.

"Now," he says, sighing emphatically, "we've just got to talk about how optimistic the album sounds."

Indeed. Where Bright Lights saw Interpol embraced for their darkness and stealth, Antics has been seen as a brighter album. It's a perception that rankles with the band, though, because it suggests a volte-face.

"I don't think it is more optimistic," says Kessler. "I look at it more in terms of an Interpol intensity, not in terms of whether it's more upbeat or optimistic or melancholy or whatever. It's just supposed to make you feel something. And to me, it just sounds like Interpol."

WHAT: Interpol, the newly crowned New York kings of Anglo-influenced glum-rock

FORMED: New York University, 1998

WHO: Singer-guitarist Paul Banks, bassists Carols D, drummer Sam Fogarino, first guitarist, Daniel Kessler

ALBUMS: Antics(2004); Turn On The Bright Lights (2002)

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